Angry bears and bad hair days: Understanding fight or flight

Imagine the following scenario: You are enjoying a hike in a forest and you become aware of a large bear charging towards you. What are you going to do?

Here are a couple of suggestions:

The first option – gripped with fear you run, your focus is only on your survival. You will probably break your personal best for the 100-metre sprint. This would seem to be the only possible course of action, indeed our bodies are built for emergencies. When needed, our fight or flight mechanism clicks into action in an instant. If you touch something hot you don't think "Maybe I should stop touching the hot thing", you just react quickly. 

The second option is not a sensible one, but it is useful just to make a point. You become aware of the ravenous carnivore charging towards you. You whip out your handy travel mirror and bemoan the state of your hair, you apply hair product until you are satisfied.

OK, so this obviously is not going to happen. Your hair or what you are going to have for your dinner tonight are not going to be the kind of things you ponder in such a situation.  This kind of relaxed state is not suitable for life-threatening emergencies. It is best described as rest and digest – the opposite of fight or flight and it is the preferable state to be in most of the time. Some benefits of the rest and digest state are curiosity, social engagement a feeling of well-being, good sleep and much more.

Understanding that the flight or flight state is helpful when there is real danger leads us to ask the question, when is it not useful? Well, any situation where being relaxed is preferable, for example, social gatherings, work presentations, asking for a refund, making a complaint etc. After all, if you are at a party you do not want to be on edge and looking for ways to escape a perceived danger. In the fight or flight state hormones play havoc in our body making the heart beat faster, preparing us to take action. Our focus becomes narrow and we will just see danger. However, when there is not a hungry predator in hot pursuit, it serves no useful purpose and will drain our energy leaving us exhausted and unable to function at our best.

Whatever, is making you stressed or on edge, it will take its toll. Perhaps you have tried to work through it or avoided situations that cause fear or stress and yet it is still there. The good news is that CBT can be very helpful in reducing such uncomfortable feelings, a therapist can help you to restructure how you think in certain situations and teach relaxation techniques.

Thinking differently about it

Our efficient brains like to stick to tried and tested formulas, for example: People can't be trusted or I must always be on my guard. A stressed state will tend to go to a familiar set of assumptions, so changing these assumptions can be a great start to feeling much calmer. You don't necessarily have to make big changes to thinking patterns – just throwing doubt on them and coming up with a few alternatives can be enough to make a difference.

Relaxation helps

Therapists can help you to turn off the fight or flight stress state. The psychologist Martin Selegman wrote 'You cant be tense if you are like a jelly'. So whatever we can do to feel more relaxed will send a signal to our brain that all is well. Mindfulness practices, breath work and progressive relaxation are a few methods that have become popular. One thing which I have found helpful is to check in with my body and just become aware of where the tension is. Are my shoulders up to my ears or are my fists clenched? And then make a quick adjustment and already I am more relaxed.

Just to sum up, your fight or flight mechanism is good when there is a real danger. For everything else, rest and digest is best.